I Surrender

I Surrender

The mentally-ill man walked into the psychiatric ward with his hands held high up in the air as though he was holding a large, heavy object.

The nurse on duty suggested he put his hands down…and so did the resident on duty. But the mentally-ill man simply responded, “I can’t let it drop…”

Then the doctor showed up, Dr. Avraham Twersky. Dr. Twersky asked the man, “Would you like me to hold that for you for an hour or two?”

With visible relief, the mentally-ill man handed what he was holding over to Dr. Twersky.
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This past fall, I had an aching pain in my shoulders that just wasn’t going away. I took Tylenol almost every day to take away the pain. But then a friend suggested that I try treating the root of the problem instead. She instructed me to take some time to relax and to ask the pain in my shoulder directly why it was there.

So I did just that. I lay down that night, after my kids were asleep, and I asked the pain in my shoulders what it was doing there.

And the pain told me that it was there because I had laid the entire struggle against the Nachlaot pedophile ring on MY little, JewishMOM shoulders. In my mind, the pain explained to me, there was no police, no legal system, no lawyers, no rabbis, no parents of victims, no community activists.

There was just me, Chana Jenny Weisberg, all by my lonesome, trying to bring down the evil criminals who masterminded the largest pedophile ring in Israel’s history.

For the next few days, I reminded myself several times a day, “Chana, there is a police force. There are excellent lawyers. There are parents of victims who are passionately working on this case.” And the pain disappeared, and never returned again.
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Surrendering. Spiritual humility. That is what my teacher, Dina Friedman, calls it.

Several times a month, I start feeling all anxious about a problem that is way too big for my little hands to hold. And Hashem tells me, “Thanks for all your help, Chana’le, but you know what? You can put your arms down for a few hours, dear JewishMOM….

“Because I’m the One running this world, not you.”

Image courtesy of Flickr.com user Sue Clark

12 comments

  1. oh, chana jenny, what a WONDERFUL WONDERFUL healing post!! i really do hope that every jewishMom that reads this takes the message to heart.

  2. I didn’t know about this devastating news. G-D help all families who got affected by those monsters!

    I can understand robbing, murder, even drug dealing but this! my heart is too limited to feel empathy for pedophiles. My mind simply cannot comprehend how someone could hurt a child and steal his innocence.

    Unfortunately, sometimes the governments protect the rapers and pedophiles, such as in Turkey. Last year, a 13-year-old girl in southern Turkey was raped by a group of 26 men which included soldiers, civil servants, tradesmen and teachers. But the court refused to consider the complainant’s health report and dismissed the rape charges and concluded the victim was WILLING!! and placed some of the blame for the incidents on the victim herself! The poor girl wasn’t able to sit down due to the stitches even months after. (http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/default.aspx?pageid=438&n=reduced-sentences-given-to-men-in-mardin-rape-case-2011-02-21)

    My heart goes out to all the victims of sexual abuse. May the Messiah come and bring redemption very soon!

  3. Beautiful post.

  4. I am deeply grateful for this post. It is exquisite. Thank you.

  5. faith/emuna

    wow. so true. how do you jolt yourself into remembering this? i need a song like this that i can play through out the day. all you talented jewish moms out there, please make us a song!

    • Music really does help. Try picking a Jewish song with inspiring words – ashreinu ma tov helkeinu, or malchutcha malchut kol olamim – or any other song which expresses what you feel you need help remembering. The words are probably already out there in Tehillim or in davening.

      If you are still really stuck try some of the wonderful music CDs by religious women. Tal Brill, for example, has several songs which might be right for you.

      If that doesn’t get you to the right song, either, maybe you are the one who should write the song!

  6. Chana Jenny, I love you.
    Thank you for writing for us. Thank you.

  7. Great idea! Thank you for reminding that as much as we feel the need to be responsible for everything that’s going on with us and our loved ones, I am not the one who is running the show.

  8. Caroline Bass

    Beautifully said and written. As everyone wrote above, thank you for reminding us again of who is really running the show, and thereby relieving some of our burdens as well. I breathed a loud sigh of relief when I finished reading your article.

  9. i feel so much fear and despair about this. i feel like we cant do much to prevent so much evil. Hashem yirachem ad mosai!

  10. Elana MIzrahi

    I LOVED this Jenny.

    love,

    Elana

  11. Thank you Chana Jenny for a inspirational read. Thank you for including the story about a mentally ill person in the beginning. I’m mentally ill, and once I tell people that in the frum community, they keep a distance, or completely cut off from me. It’s very wrong of them, since we are all here for a tikkun. I feel very alone. I have only one friend. And we wonder why Moshiach is not here yet. Also, of course people who are abusing children are choosing evil. Everyone has free choice. They are very sick, and have less free choice then others who have no proclivity towards that, but they are still choosing to hurt children, which is unforgivable. Thanks again for sharing.

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